The Corporate/Bush Dog Wing of the Democratic Party - the one that our friends in the GOP/Media Complex like to portray as "reasonable" and "sensible" and "moderate" Democrats ("reasonable" meaning "rolls over for Bush and the GOP") - would very much like us to go away.

They want to be able to keep the actual Democrats like Feingold outnumbered and shackled. They want to pass their GOP buddies' Debt Peonage Bill (aka "Bankruptcy Reform") and to put Peru under the NAFTA shadow without any fuss from us. Hell, why should they care about us? They can get more money from their corporate buddies than they do from little old us.

Which is exactly why we shouldn't go away.

Oh, I'm not talking about just shutting up and being submissive ATMs for them. Or just giving up on politics altogether. Oh, no.

Here's what I'm talking about:

We'll "go away" from the DCCC and the DSCC, as they don't need our money anyway, not with their corporate sugar daddies. Instead, we'll back individual candidates, as well as outfits like DFA and BlueAmerica and Howard Dean's DNC.

Why the DNC? Because it, you will note, lags in fundraising behind the D-Trip and DSCC. The corporate donors aren't as fond of it as they are of the DCCC and DSCC, as they know that among other things, a fifty-state strategy ultimately means less reliance on corporate cash; Corporate America prefers the Democrats' central and state orgs to be weak and unable to keep individual candidates from being co-opted and corrupted. (Dean's longtime association with clean-elections groups like Public Campaign only makes them more skittish about backing him and the DNC.)

And for those who want to strike at the roots of the problem -- namely, the intertwining of the Republicans with the US media (accelerated by the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987) and the way Big Business uses their money as a blanket to smother our voices -- there is a bit of hope, and some options for action:

-- MSNBC has, after axing Donohue (who was their biggest ratings draw) and suffering a series of right-wing ratings disasters before lucking into a ratings bonanza with Keith Olbermann, finally has realized that actually obeying market demand will make them more money than will non-stop wingnut-welfare promotion of right-wing blowhards who get beat by local public-access programming: They're giving Rosie O'Donnell a show.

-- CNN and FOX and the rest will ignore it, and the print media will shove this deep inside page B83 next to the want ads, but that doesn't mean it's not big news: Brent Wilkes is going down. Wilkes, remember, is one of the key players in the huge GOP corruption machine run by such luminaries as Jack Abramoff, Tom "K Street Project" DeLay and Grover "Drown 'Em in the Bathtub" Norquist; the lurid Duke Cunningham hookers-and-bribes scandal is the very tip of this sleaze iceberg. The rule of law still exists, and is fighting back now that the Republicans have lost ground in the last year.

-- Go check out the fine folks at Public Campaign. I think you'll like what they've already done, and what they plan on doing.

-- If you live in a state where elections are happening today, go see who's on the ballot and then vote for the progressive choices. Yeah, they may be just city councilmembers now, but they can go on to become state and national leaders -- and you can determine right now who goes on to the next level. [UPDATE:  Can you tell when I started working on this draft?  As everyone knows, the elections were yesterday, and we did pretty well.]

Now get out there and piss off some corporatists!